Cave du Pont Revisited: New Excavations a Century after Nusbaum

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Cave du Pont is a Far Western Basketmaker shelter located on private lands within Cave Lakes Canyon, six miles north of Kanab, Utah. Originally excavated in 1920 by Jesse Nusbaum, with artifact analyses by Alfred V. Kidder and Samuel J. Guernsey, Cave du Pont provided the first clear evidence that the Basketmaker archaeological culture extended west of the Colorado River. Nusbaum’s excavations, reported in 1922, identified 31 slab-lined food storage cists and an abundance of perishable artifacts consistent with Basketmaker material culture. Currently, Cave Lakes Canyon is being developed into a resort and recreational getaway with plans for unguided tours of Cave du Pont. Unguided visitation may increase erosion of the loose sandy deposits and result in vandalism and artifact collection. As part of an ongoing project to mitigate potential adverse effects associated with public access to the site archaeologists are conducting new excavations and data collection at Cave du Pont. This presentation presents preliminary observations from renewed excavations of Cave du Pont a century after the publication of Nusbaum’s work.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36226.0